With homicides on the rise, Democrats are blaming gun violence while Republicans take aim at a crime wave they argue has been unleashed by defunding or disrespecting the police in liberal cities.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared the nation’s first state gun violence emergency, illustrating his party’s approach to the violence sweeping large parts of the country. “We went from one epidemic to another epidemic. We went from COVID to the epidemic of gun violence,” he said. “More people are dying of gun violence than of COVID.”